…times just reported the virgin of wisconsin in a brilliantly captioned article: “Wisconsin on the Map to Pray With Mary” (caps are theirs, ain’t mine)…. “wisconsin on the map to pray with mary”? times, really?

turns out it is another catholic roadside attraction. vatican builds and validates ’em as often as broke countries print money…

with the currency of catholicism at an all time low, thanks to child molestation scandals, a shady, shady pope, technology and science it cannot keep up with- and no longer can deny, and a western hemisphere population getting smarter and better educated, therefore less believing by the second, vatican of course turned to the third world, especially africa and south america, where the population is still desperate, and unfortunately not educated enough to believe unconditionally and unquestionably…

the vatican, in addition to the third-world, also turned to the good old US of A– interestingly, ours is the only developed country in the world where the number of believers and the strength of religion is increasing. it is not mind boggling at all– actually it makes perfect sense: religions’ breeding grounds are pain, suffering, desperation, isolation and depression. no one turns to JC or any other super hero because of their happiness– they turn to them because of their misery.

of course the good ole US of A is a wonderful breeding ground for any religious virus– with our collective discontent, depression, meaningless & isolated lives, most americans hit the bible as often as they hit their prozac bottles, trying to make sense of it all. pity, actually…

read the article– about the shrine, the hovering blonde, surrounded in light, above the trees, pilgrimages and group prayers, the love offerings and self-sacrifice: reads no different than pagan rituals. of course there is no human sacrifice, etc, but is there much difference? what makes nigerian voodoo priests boiling and eating severed penises for strength any different? or sticking pins in a doll instead of lighting candles and building shrines? or casting spells instead of reciting 25 hail mary’s.. the only difference is one is legitimate and widespread, hence accepted, the other is an exception and a rarity, hence shunned as occult. if you look at its essence, it is the same shit…

if you read, in the times, about a sect in papua new guinea who is worshipping a tree and sacrificing animals for it, you would shrug them off as a cult of indigents who doesn’t know any better. or as pagans. or as whatever. but what is the difference between them and hordes of catholics pilgrimaging up to wisconsin with the hopes of seeing a blonde circled in light hovering over a tree?

speaking about mary- actually kudos to the catholic church for recruiting and milking her like a hacked credit card. they were eons away from the madison avenue and apple company in reaching a female demographic. like apple making technology sexy and appealing for female consumers, catholic church made religion appealing to female consumers with mary. long before the terms demographics and target audience entered our lexicon.

protestants tried (and still try) with a sexy and loving JC. but mary– that was the mastercard’s priceless campaign for the middle ages. all women can relate to mary. all women would want to build shrines to mary. instead of some dude.

granted, it was not an original idea of the catholic church– ancient religions had hera. when gods became male, they had to recruit female audiences with strong female models– hence the mother goddess, kybele, sibelius, whatever you may call her, became the wife of zeus. an old targeted marketing trick from way back. but the catholics took it to a whole different level by pushing mary. what can i say, congratulations…